10 smart ideas to get your life organised

I found this blog from Sharon Greenthal on HuffPost50 and thought you’d like some of these handy tips. I am a member of APDOUK myself and so you can see why I would recommend some of these myself. I particularly like number 1 as that is advice I have often shared with clients and of course I am bound to recommend a family information centre of some description as it aligns withÂ our My Life PackÂ® Personal Organiser which covers 10 areas of life including how to manage your digital footprint. It’s good to have another professional organiser recommending the usefulness of having one. Here are the first 5 tips from Sharon’s article:

1.Â Declutter for 15 minutes each day. This could mean anything from sorting mail to throwing out mystery foods in the refrigerator. Just 15 minutes a day can make a huge difference over time.

2. Download Quicken (or some other money management program). Quicken will make your financial life a million times easier to manage. It costs around $50, but its well worth the investment. From Quicken you can pay bills, download transactions from banks and credit card accounts, plan, budget and see what you are spending and what your overall financial picture looks like.

3. Make a simple sorting system for your papers. It’s as easy as this:
to do
to read
to file
That’s all you need to keep everything in order. Think about it … what else is there? Now use the 15 minutes as mentioned above once or twice a week to declutter your papers. Some find stackable filing shelves work, others like to have upright files they can thumb through.

4. Keep a list of your passwords in a safe place. Remembering passwords can be a real pain, and a time waster also. There are many ways to keep your passwords in a safe and secure place; besides that list on the post-it near your computer !! Including Last Pass. Find what works for you and spend a few hours recording all of your vital information in an online location that you can access from anyplace.

5. Have a family information centre. Whether it’s a bulletin board in your kitchen or a google calendar that you all sync to and add to individually, it’s important that a family shares plans and information, such as times, dates, phone numbers and so on. Colour-coding can take things even further, if you’re so inclined. Each family member can have their own color, which is extremely helpful for at-a-glance info.